


i remember the sound of your november downtown

by la_victorienne



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-04
Updated: 2009-01-04
Packaged: 2018-10-16 00:55:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10560654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/la_victorienne/pseuds/la_victorienne
Summary: winter is coming to cardiff, and above it all jack stands sentinel.





	

_Winter_  
Joshua Radin

I should know  
Who I am by now  
I walk  
The record stands somehow  
Thinking of winter

Your name is the splinter inside me  
While I wait

How has it come to this? Jack wonders, his hair blown back in the wind, the dizzying height unable to affect him any longer. There is dark and chill all around, and though his greatcoat is well-loved and cherished, it keeps back less of the cold than it used to – it’s almost as old as he is, after all, and that’s saying something – but there is something in the air that keeps Jack from retreating from his century-old refuge, something that keeps his nose to the city and his eyes to the sky.

Winter is coming; he feels it in his bones long before he smells it in the wind, a cycle of seasons he’s been attuned to for longer than he can remember, like one of Britain’s last remaining Ancients, in time with the music of the earth herself. The cold will bring new dangers, a multitude of threats against which he must defend the planet, and the thought makes him weary, not excited. He has been doing this job for much too long, and he feels used, worn, insufficient. Someone should take his place, but who can do what Jack does? Who can take his place?

He remembers Alex vividly, one of the few memories that has stuck with him through two thousand years underground and the next three centuries above it, and the unfortunate circumstances of his own ascension. He was just a child then, it seems, a scant two hundred years old, and he knows now he was unprepared for the responsibility. What he made of Torchwood, what Torchwood has become – it is something he should be proud of, but also something to fear, built on the ideals of a too-young Captain with an eye for the beautiful. Sometimes Jack thinks no-one should run Torchwood unless they have at least five hundred years under their belt, and that leaves in existence only him and the Doctor.

“Sometimes you just have to let it go, Jack.”

It’s a voice he hasn’t heard for years, not since that last night when an unplanned showdown with about twelve Judoon soldiers ended the life of its owner – the last words Jack heard from that voice were “love you,” and so its presence behind him makes him catch his breath. It’s a ghost, it must be; Ianto has been gone for too long to be real – yet, at the same time, Jack feels himself wishing desperately for a miracle.

“Let what go, Ianto?” he asks without turning around, unwilling to shatter the illusion.

“Everything,” he hears in response, closer than before. Jack closes his eyes and breathes in – that’s Ianto’s smell, too, wafting over him even more minutely than the smell of winter all around. Oh, how real he seems! But Jack still won’t turn, won’t lose what his subconscious has worked so hard to create, no. Not even a kiss is worth losing this memory. The voice continues: “You work so hard to take everything upon yourself – do you think the team you work with now can’t see it the way we could? They just don’t know how to touch you, Jack, and they need to. They need to be let in.”

“But it hurts,” Jack confesses, voice choking – how much longer can he hold on to the magic? How long before he has to let Ianto go again?

“I know it does, but it’s worth it all the same, I swear. Just think of what you could do, what you could be. Torchwood deserves a leader, not a martyr. We fight, we love, we die. It is fitting, Jack. It is right.”

Jack lets out the anguished sob he’s been holding in, frustrated and fruitless. He’s angry, and miserable, and so impossibly lost – within himself, his own work, his own purpose. And what does his mind bring him? Ianto Jones. Ianto Jones, of all people. “You weren’t supposed to matter!” he announces, weeping openly in front of the city that barely knows he exists. “You weren’t supposed to be this important!”

“You weren’t supposed to love me this much. I know. I understand. But you did, and I loved you – still love you, Jack, and always will. You can’t lose us. We’re always with you.”

Jack takes a shuddering breath, wiping the tears from his face with a single, callused hand. “I don’t know how,” he admits, and that’s when he feels it – a warm hand on his shoulder, a puff of breath at his ear.

“I’ll teach you,” Ianto says, and finally Jack can turn and face him, he who is flesh and blood, not a ghost, not an illusion. “It’s all right, Jack. I’m here now, and when I’m gone again you’ll be able to let me go. Soon it will be time to face your team – but for the moment, for tonight, I’m here. I’m yours.”

Jack can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t process, but his arms are reaching, muscle remembering what mind cannot, and finally, _finally_ , there are familiar lips on his and familiar arms holding him tight. He knows not how this miracle has come to be, but Ianto is here, is real, is as frantic for Jack as Jack is for him – and that is enough.

Jack can let go.


End file.
